


Ten Songs

by Fabrisse



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-03
Updated: 2010-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: iTune on Shuffle, first ten songs. My cheats were: when I got a second classical guitar piece I skipped it, and I wrote until the vignette was done rather than stopping as soon as the song ended. In my defense, though, the last vignette was written to a song that's nearly twelve minutes long. *G*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Songs

**Siciliana -- Guitar Transcriptions (Enno Voorhurst)**

Kurt leaned back from the chemistry notes he was reviewing and looked over at Blaine who was also studying -- calculus in his case.

Blaine looked up and said, "I've finished. You?"

Kurt nodded and kept looking at him.

"What? Do I have spinach in my teeth?"

"No. You're perfect." Kurt rolled his eyes.

"But."

"I feel like David and Wes already know everything about you."

Blaine thought for a moment, then reached for his guitar.

Kurt started to say something, but Blaine caught his eye and shook his head. Slowly, he began to pick out a classical piece, glancing at one hand or the other occasionally to reassure himself on the fingering.

When the last note died, he looked up and saw Kurt with his hand over his heart. He smiled and said, "No one else knows."

 

 **Under Your Spell/Standing -- Once More with Feeling (Amber Benson/Anthony Stewart Head)**

Burt and Carole waited to turn on the car until they were positive they could no longer pick Kurt out of the crowd of Dalton boys. It was tough leaving him there, not because Kurt didn't need the protections -- the money was the least of it -- but because these boys would change Kurt. The uniform always changes the wearer.

All Burt could hope for was that when his son came home to visit, he wouldn't be ashamed to put on his other uniform -- the one that had "Kurt" embroidered over the breast pocket and said "Hummel's Garage" across the back.

 

 **Children's Song #15 -- Chick Corea Songbook (The Manhattan Transfer)**

Finn loved anthem rock. Puck's tastes were more eclectic, but he tended toward rock as well. Mercedes was all about the diva gospel music, while Rachel was about the diva Broadway music. Kurt matched up with her on that. Most of the other listened purely to top forty. They squabbled in practices, soloed a lot, and did some basic choreography while, in Finn's words, keeping it loose and letting Mike, Brittany, and Santana do the heavy lifting on the dancing.

The Warblers warmed up as a group, and the exercises they used were different depending on which of them was leading -- each member was required to take a turn. Today David and Wes, whom Kurt was learning to think of as a unit, were taking them through a six part exercise that involved breath control and allowed for improvisation. It was wordless and sounded amazing.

New Directions emphasized the words and their interpretation. The Warblers emphasized the flow of music. Between them, Kurt thought, he might become a real singer.

 **So Hard -- Taking the Long Road (Dixie Chicks)**

Comedies end with lovers united because everything after that point is hard.

Blaine never had to work for anything. He grew up with servants. Thanks to various trust funds that his parents couldn't break when they disowned him, he was attending Dalton on his own money. There was a trust fund for college.

Kurt, who knew he had the brains and, maybe, the talent to get himself out of Lima, Ohio, couldn't fathom the idea of not working.

He paid his union dues and kept his mechanics certification current, not because he enjoyed it, but because it paid better than waiting tables or tutoring would. He earned his spending money, and he was, he hoped, earning a college scholarship with his grades.

Blaine took a year off between high school and college because he wanted to wait and go with Kurt. And that was their first real fight.

It took a lot of arguing, and Blaine begging him to meet at a particular address in downtown Lima before Kurt understood.

The regional head of the Boys and Girls Club was practically kissing Blaine's feet for the work he was doing at the center. While Kurt was at McKinley, Blaine was doing whatever was needed, from playing guitar to keep four and five year olds occupied to lifeguarding when the twelve year olds had their lessons to tutoring high school seniors in AP English.

When they left, Blaine put his arm around Kurt's waist and said, "I can live on my investments, but I'm not lazy."

"No, you're not. I'm sorry," Kurt said.

Blaine grinned. "Don't be sorry. Just get New Directions to help at our next fundraiser."

 

 **Stout Hearted Men -- Simply Streisand (Barbra Streisand)**

Camaraderie wasn't something he'd really thought about. He'd never had many friends. Some of it was his manner -- he knew at least two kids in elementary school whose parents had decided that "the Hummel kid" wasn't good for them to hang around with -- and some of it was the fact that he recharged on his own with music most other people his age didn't like and projects that many of them didn't understand.

New Directions was the first place where he'd had comrades. People who, even if they didn't like him, would stand up for him and claim him as "one of us." Even there, though, he was close to Mercedes, had hung out more with Brittany, Artie, and Tina last year, and engaged in a fierce rivalry with Rachel Berry. Puck and the other guys weren't beating him up any more, but they weren't exactly thrilled about him. Kurt had never been sure whether Santana liked him, tolerated him, or loathed him. He leaned toward tolerated.

Dalton boys were camaraderie personified; they were better at it than New Directions. If a student was in an extracurricular, then everyone else in that extracurricular was part of his circle. If John's grades went too low, he couldn't stay in the club, so everyone helped John (or whoever -- Kurt wasn't sure he knew anyone named John).

On the one hand, it was a support system that worked. Dalton was like a bamboo grove, all the runners underground branching out and feeding the shoots above. On the other hand, everyone was bamboo. At McKinley, some people were orchids. Orchids might die more easily -- they were fragile -- but they were showy, fragrant, and unique.

Kurt looked around The Warblers rehearsal. Here his roots were nourished. For awhile, he could look like bamboo.

 **Searching for My Love -- Four Chords and Several Years Ago (Huey Lewis and the News)**

Karofsky wasn't stupid. He couldn't pass as a student at Fag Central, but there were deliveries to the school. There were repairmen who worked on electrical or plumbing problems in the basements. There were ways for him to go and find Kurt.

All he wanted to do was explain to Kurt that he loved him, that he could make Kurt feel so good. It might not be right that Kurt was prettier than any girl at McKinley, but Karofsky would do anything to get to kiss and touch and love Kurt the way he wanted to.

He made it look like a late afternoon delivery, and then he hid in the basement of the school until after their curfew. It hadn't been hard to find out Kurt's room and hall. He was caught by the alarms on the hall doors.

The Headmaster had Karofsky arrested without even telling Kurt.

 

 **Ol' Man River -- Negro Spirituals (Rhoda Scott)**

"I like my voice. I can do things most guys can't, but the trade off is I can't sing some really beautiful songs."

"Like _Ol' Man River_ "

Kurt blushed. "Stop making fun of me."

Blaine smiled at him and said, "I bet you'd be great on _Can't Help Lovin' that Man of Mine._

 

 **Love Autopsy -- Music and Lyrics Soundtrack (Hugh Grant)**

David shook his head. "No seriously, don't let Wes write lyrics. He can sing and he's great at math. But he has no talent for words. "

 

 **You Can't Get to Heaven On One Hallelujah -- "The Life" Cast Recording**

The one thing Kurt really hated about Dalton was morning chapel. It would have been bad enough if he'd been with his classmates, hunched as they were in what David referred to as "the Episcopal crouch" and whispering amongst themselves. As a member of the Warblers, he had to sit behind the altar and sing the hymns -- on Friday there was even an anthem. This week Wes was the soloist and the rest of them were doing their best to raise the roof like the choir at Mercedes church.

The music was glorious. But he despised every word of prayer he had to utter.

 **Ancient Love -- Rise (Anoushka Shankar)**

"You know Shakespeare was quoting Marlowe, right?" Blaine was no real help in math or sciences, but Kurt loved discussing literature with him.

At first he'd thought it was something that Blaine was doing to improve Kurt's grades. They'd talked about the need for a scholarship the next year, and he'd thought that Blaine, being a year ahead, might just be acting as a guide for him, within the bounds of the honor code. (Signing "I have neither given nor received help on this work, nor am I aware of any breach in the honor code" on every single scrap of homework, pop quiz, or exam that he turned in was still Kurt's biggest culture shock. It didn't mean they couldn't study together, unless a teacher forbade it for a project. It did mean they had to say, in writing, who they'd studied with and, if someone else's idea was elaborated on in a student's work, name the originator. Kurt was still boggling.) But when Mister Maugham thanked him for opening Blaine's mind up to a gender identity issue in Shakespeare's comedies, Kurt realized that working together made them _both_ better students.

Blaine said, "The first time I read _As You Like It_ , Maugham kept mentioning the 'great reckoning in a little room' line and the other minor references to Marlowe, and then the book said, this line was a quote. So I looked up the whole poem."

"Do you have a copy?"

"Better, I memorized it.

"It lies not in our power to love or hate,  
"For will in us is overruled by fate.  
"When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,  
"We wish that one should love, the other win;

"And one especially do we affect  
"Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:  
"The reason no man knows; let it suffice  
"What we behold is censured by our eyes.  
"Where both deliberate, the love is slight:  
"Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?"

Kurt smiled. "I'll bet the discussion of 'when two are stripped' was lively."

"And whether or not there was such a thing as love at first sight" Blaine grinned back. "The class was about fifty-fifty on that one."

"Which side did you come down on?" Kurt was curious.

"I was completely cynical about it." Blaine raised his eyebrows and caught Kurt's eye before continuing. "Then I saw you."


End file.
